1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to transmitting a packet, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method which indicate a policy with respect to a packet and transmit the packet, wherein the policy is in regard to an acknowledgement packet and a retransmission packet which correspond to the type of packet to be transmitted.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is an increasing demand for an efficient transmission method in a wireless network environment since the migration to wireless networks, and the need for massive amounts of multimedia data to be transmitted. Furthermore, there is an increasing necessity with respect to wireless transmitting of high quality video, such as digital video disk (DVD) images, high-definition television (HDTV) images, and the like, between various home devices.
A communication channel in the wireless network environment is easily affected by various external events, and thus, smooth data transmission is not guaranteed. Accordingly, a reception station, which has received data, transmits an acknowledgement packet for indicating that the data has been correctly received. A transmission station transmits next data after receiving the acknowledgement packet.
However, in the case where corrupted data is received, the reception station transmits the acknowledgement packet including a flag indicating that the data is corrupted, thereby enabling the transmission station to retransmit the corresponding data or to perform separate measures. Here, the acknowledgement packet has to be transferred to the transmission station within a predetermined period of time after the data is transmitted. Thus, if the transmission station does not receive the acknowledgement packet, the transmission station may recognize that a problem has occurred in transmission of the data, and may retransmit the corresponding data.
Multimedia data, such as video data or audio data, is data which is time-dependent. Thus, it is more important to transmit the data within a time flow rather than to retransmit the data that is corrupted or lost. For example, even if multimedia data 2, from among a plurality of pieces of multimedia data 1, 2, and 3 which are sequentially transmitted as a successive stream, is corrupted or lost, it may be preferable to transmit the multimedia data 3 at a scheduled time rather than to allocate a time to retransmit the multimedia data 2.
Also, due to the size of the multimedia data, the multimedia data requires allocation of much network resource. Thus, in the case where the multimedia data is retransmitted, wasteful use of network resource may occur.
Internet data which has payload corresponding to File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Media Access Control (MAC) commands are time-independent data due to their importance, thus, lossless transmission is more important.
In this manner, important matters in transmission of data may vary according to the type of the data, and thus, a method of utilizing a network according to the type of data is required.